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In what could be the final stage of Robert Zellner’s 2 1/2 -year quest to get his job back, the fired Cedarburg teacher is asking the state Supreme Court to decide his pornography-related termination case.

Zellner’s attorney, in legal papers filed with the high court, argues that if an arbitrator’s decision to give Zellner his job back is not reinstated, the courts will be flooded with arbitration cases and more than 30 years of legal precedent will be undone.

The petition filed this week with the Supreme Court likely signals the final stage of Zellner’s legal fight.

If the high court does take the case, both Zellner and the Cedarburg School Board would have to abide by its decision. And if it declines, two court rulings upholding Zellner’s firing would be allowed to stand.

Zellner, a science teacher at Cedarburg High School, was fired in January 2006, after the School Board determined he viewed pornography on his school computer for 67 seconds on a Sunday.

There were also statements, disputed by Zellner, that he told school officials he had accessed pornography at school at other times.

As is common in many labor disputes involving union contracts, Zellner fought his termination by taking his case to an arbitrator. After conducting a hearing, the arbitrator ruled that Zellner should have been reprimanded and not fired, and he ordered the School Board to rehire him.

But the board refused, so Zellner went to court.

At both the circuit court and appeals court levels, Zellner’s firing was upheld. In its ruling last month, a state appeals court said Zellner’s viewing of pornography constituted immoral behavior, and that immoral behavior, as a strong public policy concern, is a basis for a court to take the rare step of overturning an arbitrator’s decision.

Zellner’s attorney, Jina Jonen of the state teachers union in Madison, says in her petition to the Supreme Court that allowing the arbitrator’s decision in Zellner’s case to remain overturned would run contrary to more than 30 years of legal precedent. She argues that the Supreme Court must take Zellner’s case to determine whether courts can overturn arbitration decisions based on their own conclusions from the facts of a case.

Jonen said in her filing that “the courts will be flooded with complaints” seeking to overturn binding-arbitration decisions if the appeals court’s ruling in Zellner’s case is allowed to stand.

Hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin employees are covered by contracts that use arbitration to settle workplace disputes.